CHANDIGARH: The former Miss India first runners up, Karminder Kaur and her associate Tejpal Singh face charges of having duped the Punjab State Industrial Development Corporation (PSIDC) of an estimated Rs 10 crore in connivance with six others.
The case relates to the grant of huge loans to the firm floated by the accused persons. Certain senior bureaucrats of the state may also come under a cloud for recommending the financial institutions to grant loan to the firm. ‘These institutions include the Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IPCI) and two public sector banks, which gave lakhs of rupees in loan to the firm.
The PSIDC has drafted a complaint for registration of police case against the accused under various sections of the IPC and the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA). Meanwhile, the CBI is making preliminary inquiries into the conduct of the IFC! Officials.
The PSIDC cantered into an agreement in February 1992 with J.S. Sethi, who had floated a company by the name of Amrit Cellulose Limited (ACL), for the production of nitrocellulose and bleached cotton linters in the joint sector. ‘The project was conceived by Tejpal Singh, Executive Director of ACL. Total cost of the project was estimated at Rs 14.40 crore.
The PSIDC initially extended a Joan of Rs 2.12 crore, IFCI a sum of Rs 6 crore and the banks Ks 2 crore. The promoter, which included the wife and two daughters of Sethi, agreed to invest Rs 2.04 crore. Another Rs 2.08 was to be collected through a public issue.
The Amrit Cellulose Limited, in turn, decided to import technical knowhow from a Germany based company named “Micro and Macro Technologies (MMT),” promoted by Karminder Kaur and Tejpal Singh, A sum of Rs 56 lakh in foreign exchange was collected from Indian financial institutions and siphoned off to Germany as a part of a total payment of Rs 1,73 crore.
Before the Amrit Cellulose could go in for its public issue in the same year, the inquiries by the banks regarding the bonafides of the MMT evoked a fax message from the office of the Indian Ambassador in Germany, terming the firms as “nonexistent.”
Sethi has in a letter to the PSIDC admitted that MMT was promoted by Karminder Kaur and Tejpal Singh. Since a fax message from the Ambassador indicated the status of the firm. Sethi agreed that the amount remitted to Germany would be retrieved and paid back. As the public issue was stalled because of the doubtful antecedents of the MMT, he also agreed that the remaining part of the investment would be made by the promoters.
The PSIDC has in its inquiry report stated that the promoters of the Amrit Cellulose floated four other’ bogus’ companies through which they intended to utilize large amounts. All the supply orders for the project like building maternal and equipment were placed through these trading Companies to be supplied at a profit margin. This method, according to the corporation report, was meant to pilfer government money, which was otherwise required for cellulose project.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 12, 1996
